Unless otherwise indicated herein, the materials described in this section are not prior art to the claims in this application and are not admitted to be prior art by inclusion in this section.
In certain situations, the typical method of detecting occupancy status and turning light fixtures on/off or changing their dim levels might be distracting or inappropriate. For example, in a small conference room or office, all lights should react to a person entering the space. In a large, open office space with many light fixtures, however, all of the light fixtures do not need to turn on for a single person working in one corner of the area in an otherwise unoccupied space.
Some methods of detecting occupancy and controlling lights employ a complex, centrally controlled system which tracks the position of an occupant using one or more PIR sensors, and adjusts the intensity of selected nearby fixtures to “follow” that occupant with a moving zone of light. While this is a viable approach, it has the drawbacks of complexity and high cost.